Winterling

Fer lives in a cottage in the woods with her Grandmother, Grand-Jane. Grand-Jane knows a lot about the woods and the plants there – especially how the plants can heal people or ease their troubles.

One day while Fer is out in the woods she hears a snarling dog fight and sees a pack of wolves attacking a black dog. 3 against 1 plain makes her mad! She grabs a large stick and starts swinging it and yelling. Miraculously, the wolves fade back into the bushes.

“Panting, Fer turned to the thing they’d been attacking. It had fallen beneath the branches of a bush; she saw its dark shape huddled there. Carefully, gripping her club in case it tried to bite, she pushed aside the branches, letting the moon’s light in. Fer blinked and set down the club. It wasn’t a dog at all. It was a boy.” (page 11)

Huh. A boy! Something strange is going on here! And when Fer takes the bleeding boy home for Grand-Jane to heal, things get stranger still, because Grand-Jane says, “No.” No? Don’t help a bleeding little boy? He does snarl like a dog. He also has yellow eyes. It turns out Grand-Jane knows some things Fer doesn’t; things about how a little boy and black dog can actually be the same thing!

A great adventure that puts Fer in a magical place where the lines between humans and animals are blurred and where questions asked three times and promises are the most powerful magic of all. I look forward to seeing what happens next. I hope there is a book two because I’m not done with Fer and the blackdog/boy and that black horse on the cover – he’s part of it too!

Don’t miss Sarah Prineas’s other OUTSTANDING series, The Magic Thief. If you liked Fer and her adventure transporting to a magical place and discovering her place in it, try The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Wildwood, or 100 Cupboards: